Video: The only thing CDs are good for these days is to serve as slow-motion destruction entertainment for YouTube videos. The mirror circle shape lends itself to watchable GIFs where young people on the internet wonder just what the hell retro future object they’re looking at.

27 March 2014

One person’s trash is another visionary person’s community art project. In this clever and beautiful repurposing of old CDs, Ignatov Architects has created Mirror Culture, a shimmery entrance to the public park in Varna, Bulgaria. A bunch of used CDs never looked so good.

26 March 2013

It turns out that even the most expensive of home stereo CD players are still occasionally susceptible of incorrectly reading the data on the disc, which can ruin the listening experience. So a company called Parasound has created the CD 1, a Linux-powered standalone CD player that actually reads a disc multiple times during playback to find and eliminate errors.

19 November 2012

Compared to a CD’s meagre 700MB storage space and a DVD’s 5GB-ish capacity, a Blu-ray’s 25GB allowance is pretty impressive. But it doesn’t come close to a whole terabyte, and that’s what FujiFilm is planning to pack on an optical disc arriving in 2015.

2 October 2012

Thirty years ago, the CD was born. This, of course, was the medium that would usher in the era of optical drives, a technology that dominated personal computing for decades. And though it’s not completely dead, it’s certainly on its way out. In fact, I honestly can’t even remember the last time I used mine. How often do you still use yours?

Thirty years ago today, a game-changing pair of products were announced: Billy Joel’s 52nd Street on Compact Disc, and the Sony CDP-101, the first device to be able to play it. And the age of the CD was born.

13 September 2012

Because we’re not all artists who can turn dead media into a gigantic skull, I’m curious as to what you guys have done with your dusty collection of CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays, VHS tapes and all other old, physical media? It seems heartless to toss ‘em out but they’re also so completely useless. What to do?

12 September 2012

I have a gigantic case full of CDs that I have no idea what to do with. Do I toss them out? Do I save them for my kids? I’m sure other people have the same questions with their dead physical media — CDs, video tapes, DVDs, soon to be Blu-rays — what’s going to happen to all of that? Why not turn it into a giant skull?

17 August 2012

It’s the 30th anniversary of the world’s first CD today, and it got me thinking about my first CD purchase. It’s a special time in a person’s life when they buy their first CD with their own money. I know that when I bought my first CD I raced home, tore of the clear packaging and threw it into the player. That CD didn’t see light outside of the tray for weeks. Sadly, upon reflection, it was a pretty embarrassing purchase.